It is desired to provide vehicles with increasing communication capabilities, such as the ability to transmit and receive increased amounts of data. The data may include data relating to navigation, voice communication, multimedia and data communication. Data communication may relate to vehicle systems and data utilised by vehicle occupants or communication systems outside of the car. In order to support such communication capabilities it is necessary to provide the vehicle with one or more antennas. Effectively arranging those antennas about a vehicle may be challenging, especially when faced with different vehicle designs.
In particular it is increasingly desired to form vehicle body panels from materials such as composites, for example to save weight, to allow complex designs or aesthetic forms of body panels, which may not be suitable to form an antenna ground plane. Similarly it is an increasing trend in vehicle design to form vehicle roofs from transparent materials which may not be suitable to form an antenna ground plane. It is also often desired to provide vehicles with increasingly larger opening portions, such as sunroofs, which slide rearward from above front, and sometimes also rear, occupants of the vehicle. With such opening portions roof-mounted antenna can foul the rearward movement of the opening portion.
It is an object of embodiments of the invention to at least mitigate one or more of the problems of the prior art. It is an object of embodiments of the invention to provide an antenna system for a vehicle which is compatible with various vehicle designs and styles.